Rich Desires
by Thessaly
Summary: He took in my appearance, halfdressed and childishly seductive, and stopped as though he had walked into a wall.  Christine and the Phantom you know they didn't get No Return chemistry without some kind of conversation.


I've always hoped that Christine wasn't as stupid as she appeared, and the perversity that drives me to make unsympathetic characters sympathetic through odd authorial gymnastics presented me with Christine. Likewise, I've always thought that Susan Kay could have handled the Phantom/Christine relationship better than she did. This is partly inspired by her novel _Phantom_, though in general I prefer to play in the musical-verse because, quite honestly, it's one of the more coherent. No doubt those of you who have read _Phantom_ will recognize which scene I'm riffing on.

This cuts in somewhere between "Twisted Every Way" and the graveyard trio. Oh, come on, you know they didn't get "Point of No Return" chemistry without some kind of conversation.

_What raging fire shall flood the soul?_

_What rich desire unlocks its door?_

_What sweet seduction lies before us?_

"No, Raoul, no. No, no, no, no, no." I wouldn't do it. I couldn't do it. Don Juan. Oh, God. He had written it for me. It was a creation with only one thing in mind, and that was the little, insignificant person of Christine Daae, nineteen years old, and white-cold with terror. I stumbled into my dressing room after that fateful conversation, where even Raoul sided with the managers. My Raoul. The man who loved me. My fiancé, as if I had the right to consider myself free. I sank into my chair, shaking with impotent frustration, and it took me a moment to realize what it was on my table. A thick pad of paper. An opera score. _Don Juan Triumphant_, a cutting irony if ever there was one. His opera. My opera. Against my own better judgment, against my will, I opened it and began to read.

We had a formal read-through the next day, on the stage. _Don Juan_ scared me. While Carlotta, Piangi, all the others, stumbled through their lines and unaccustomed dissonances, my part was easy. Frighteningly so. It was easy to the point of instinctuality, built of things I knew - a C to D trill which I loved for its eerie sound; a phrase of a mazurka I had found buried in a pile of handwritten sheaves and demanded that he play. The notes came easily to me, as simple as breathing. It was at once a shrine to me and a rendering of me in music, as exact as the pretty little portrait Raoul had commissioned for Christmas. This was not an opera meant to be saved for posterity. It was meant for now, a self-immolating salamander of an opera which would only be played once, to score an indelible hit to the key players tied together by those blood-red staves and strange harmonies.

I was ill at ease in my dressing room and my mind turned continually toward the mirror. And so it was a relief when I heard _his_ voice, singing one of the arias. "Christine," he said, softly. There will always be a part of me that will respond, automatically and unthinkingly to that voice, whatever and whenever it might speak. I walked to the mirror and, like an addict, returned to that mind-dulling world of sensory darkness that I both feared and desperately needed. A hand, coated in smooth leather, caught my wrist, and a tiny puff of breath brushed over the back of my hand. The turnings of the path were familiar to me now, as was the boat and the glimmerings of the lake, ghostly in the lantern-light. We landed and he was there on the shore to offer me a hand out of the boat. And then we were in the room, opulent scarlet and black, a conjuror's cave. Erik went to the samovar and, divested of his cloak, poured tea for himself and water for me. I moved to the piano, surprisingly patient and unobtrusive in the corner. It must have known that the organ was its master's first love, and quietly effaced itself to cause as little trouble as possible. Now he came and sat at the piano. "You are not too tired?" I wasn't sure if that were a question or a statement. "We must discuss bar 195 of the second aria." He gave me a few chords introduction. "Sing that." Once again, I stumbled, as I had earlier today on bar 200. I stopped, embarrassed at having been caught out at a mistake.

"I'm sorry - I always ..."

"It doesn't suit you." Erik played the offending bar again to himself. "Sign an A instead of the C."

I did. He nodded, played a few more notes. "Put a mordent on the B." He listened, then quite calmly changed the score. "And again, the new way." I always watched him compose with wonder. I was an artist, not a creator, and I viewed that act of creation with awe. He seemed to hear the music in his head before he wrote it, the long hands, now ungloved, racing along the paper, pausing, moving backwards to correct, then forward again, the melody blooming under the swift strokes of the pen, black flowers on white parchment.

We worked through the score. Of course Erik knew and remembered every place where I had hesitated or done wrong in rehearsal. I made another mistake, and stopped again. "That _was_ your fault," he said almost lightly. "It stays."

I shrugged, possessed of a mad and dangerous whim to tease. "Of course it was my fault. The great Maestro is never wrong. What can a poor singer do?"

Erik watched me gravely from the piano bench. "Why, sing, of course."

The urge grew stronger. What came over me, I do not know. Before that day, I would have assumed that Erik and humour were complete strangers, but I had a sudden urge to make him laugh. I pulled a long red scarf from the back of one of the chairs and draped it around my head and shoulders like a shawl. I put on my best Carlotta posture and said in my heaviest Spanish accent, "Very weel, Signor. Aminta weel sing for you." I began to improvise a vaguely Spanish-sounding polka and to pirouette around the room, making everything as melodramatic as possible. There was a stifled sound from the piano, as though he _had_ laughed, although I couldn't be sure. Then the piano picked up the melody and accompaniment, adding silly chords and ornamentation. We were, for a moment, perfectly matched. I was caught on the swirling updraft of the music and was allowed to lose myself, for that infinitesimal space of time, in the heady joy of creation. I twirled madly around and around until the room became one blur of scarlet shot with gold that spun in front of my dizzy eyes.

As I collapsed into a chair reality re-asserted itself. I was laughing and out of breath, and back into my normal self - the insignificant person of Christine Daae, lying, wheezing in an armchair, abandoned by music and once more an artist and conduit. Erik was watching me, and as I become aware of practical things - my belly ached, my hair was in my eyes, my ankle hurt - I also became aware of my physical appearance. My hair was falling down and my dress rucked up to my knees and badly wrinkled. I tidied my clothing and hair as best I could, feeling my cheeks go red as I did so. His stare was intense and completely unreadable. I looked down at my hands and wound the fingers together. He rose suddenly and with the slightest swish of silk, moved to the sideboard, where he poured two glasses of red wine. He brought one over the me, and for a moment my world narrowed again, this time to sensory perceptions. The cool crystal between my fingers, the brush of cold fingers against mine, a symphony of red and gold and black and white and the deep burgundy of the wine. Its fruity, slightly bitter taste that stuck in the back of the throat and faintest scent of incense; deep, erotic, mysterious, and barely present. I watched him, a sharp black silhouette against the lush red and gold hangings he so favoured. He lifted the glass and drank while I watched, mesmerized by the simple movement of an arm or an infinitely graceful hand. I shivered suddenly, assailed by feelings I didn't – couldn't - understand.

Erik turned and the picture was lost. "Are you cold? Perhaps you should go to bed."

I nodded abstractly, still having trouble breathing. I put the glass down with a shaking hand, obscurely glad he did not offer to take it directly from me. I let the door to my bedroom swing behind me. Then, as I looked around at the half-familiar luxuries of my apartment here, I tried to regain my calm. Undressed, with a wrap over my shoulders, I sat at my dressing table and prepared to discipline my straggling and rebellious hair. It had been a wet, humid day and the weather alone made my hair difficult and even more untidily curly than usual. It had at one point been pinned at the back of my neck in a low, tidy bun, but movement and my dancing had dislodged it to the point where most of it hung down my back and spilled over my shoulders.

Curious, I piled my hair on top of my head and pinned it loosely. I had seen Meg, the other week, spend three quarters of an hour at her mirror with heated hairpins and rollers trying to achieve this style and in between frustrated oaths and mutters, she had urged me to try it as well. Now I did. It was a provocative style, even for a dancer. Through the partly open door, I heard the short bursts and abrupt stops which meant Erik was composing. I recognized a fragment and realized that it was my - our - polka being written down. I smiled. I pulled a few curls loose to frame my face and then, on a whim, added a large gold carnation from the vase on the dressing table, to achieve a vaguely Spanish look. As girls will, I played at being seductive my mirror, pouting and smiling, fluttering my eyelashes, my chin resting in my hands. I let the wrap slide down my bare shoulders, tilting my head experimentally.

The music stopped and I heard a slight tap on my door. "Christine?"

"Yes," I answered absent-mindedly.

"Which note did you - I beg your pardon." He entered and for a moment we stared at each other in my mirror. He took in my appearance, half-dressed and childishly seductive, and stopped as though he had walked into a wall. I could feel a wave of ambiguous shame rising from my breast to my face and, in desperation, I dropped my head into my hands, breaking off the contact as rudely as I could.

"No, I beg your pardon," I said indistinctly, without turning. "I shouldn't have -"

Still silent, he turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door firmly as he went. And for a while, silence reigned. I got into bed, feeling strangely ashamed, as though I had touched a door which I should never have been aware of, let alone moved to open. And, in this worried state of mind, I fell asleep.

I woke to music. Not the light flirtations of ballet suites or the tender swells of lieder, but something beyond even opera. A chaos of sound and feelings that assaulted the ears and acted directly on the nerves while bypassing the brain entirely. I had never heard him play anything like this before - I had never even _heard_ anything like this before. The music pushed me flat on my bed and ran fingertip quavers over my face and hands; I felt as if my nerve ends were suddenly bare and I breathed with difficulty. Passion translated through God knows what mental alchemy to pure sound caressed me as I lay there in the warm darkness, aroused by some intangible lover. Something was building, I could feel it and I tipped my head back, my breath caught in my throat. And then it - stopped. Everything was silent once more and the wave of sound-induced feeling retreated abruptly, leaving me bereft and confused. I sat up and stumbled from the bed to the dressing table, where I lit a candle with trembling hands. Still shaking, I gathered the clothes I had come down in and left the room. Erik was standing beside the piano, his hands over his face, perfectly still. I must have made some sound though, for he looked up suddenly, and, without moving, said, "You should not have heard that. I apologize. You are leaving?" I nodded, mutely. "Perhaps that is good. But you have my word that nothing of the kind will ever happen again."

Staring at that still figure, I found my voice. I walked forward until we were quite close, then, looking up at him, I said, "You took a risk playing that while I was under this roof. You know what your music does."

His eyes avoided mine. "I have already apologized. But understand that my control is sometimes ... less than absolute. It is my concern, not yours. Again, I beg your pardon; I had absolutely no right to exercise this - outlet while you were present."

Our eyes met this time. "I understand I may have overstepped a boundary tonight, but it was not a boundary I was precisely aware of. I would have ignored that door, but you have started something with that music and stopped before it came to completion. There is something unfinished between the two of us." The silence, an unresolved chord, rang as we faced each other. Then Erik looked away.

"Go home, Christine. Go home, child; you should not have been caught up in this. Get out." The words were harsh, but the tone gentle and sorrowful. I turned and fled, half afraid, half strangely curious, and wholly unsettled.


End file.
